Deathskull Bombshell (11 page)

Austin nodded. He paused. “Do you guys, like…
do it?”

Parker undid his ponytail and looked at his
reflection, absently brushing back a few strands of hair. It was as
if he didn’t hear Austin at all.

“Well?” Austin asked.

Parker tied his hair back, a tighter ponytail
this time. He scratched his eyebrow behind his glasses. “Sorry,
man, that’s all you get. I gotta get to work.” He straightened the
collar of his work shirt.

Austin looked at him, then at himself.
TeleCollectCorpUnion was pretty big on business casual. Polo shirts
every day. The best part of his day was coming back home and
changing into his flannel. “Yeah.”

They left.

October 2003

“Hey, Parsnips,” Margot said, dropping her
backpack at the table.

I was trying to read
The Great Gatsby
for class but it was too boring. All that bullshit symbolism the
teacher kept drilling into our heads. This means this because the
syllabus says so, and if you argue I’ll flunk you. I had to read
all this shitty literature and then memorize everything for the
exams. Symbolism was stupid. No idea how this helped me prepare for
college. I learned how to read back in grade school.

“Don’t call me Parsnips,” I said.

“Whatcha reading?” she asked.

She leaned over my shoulder, and I snapped
the book shut.

“Oh,
Gatsby
? I read that already.”

“Good for you,” I said. My sister the
genius.

“Mom and Dad are sending me to library school
when I’m older,” she bragged. “Isn’t that nice? They set up a bank
account.”

“Last week it was med school, now library
school,” I grumbled. “Make up your mind.”

She laughed. “Is someone jealous?”

I ignored her and went back to my book.

“Some of us non-musicians have to make career
plans. It’s not all fat paychecks over here.”

I gestured at the kitchen table, covered in
unfinished homework. “Do you see anything here that looks like a
fat paycheck?”

She shook her head. “No. Just a fat asshole.”
She pinched me, and I contemplated throwing
The Great Gatsby
at her. At least then it would be of some use.

March 2003

It isn’t cheating to get a girl’s phone
number on a date. I, Trevor Ericksen, do it all the time. To the
untrained eye, I appear to be merely an abnormally handsome
guitarist, but I moonlight as a phone number collector.

My standards, of course, are high. Of course,
I have no problem requesting the phone number of a homely woman
once in a while. Not very often, mind you. But homely women have
their strong points. They’re often intellectually gifted, nerdy,
however you want to spin it. Not much to look at, but fun to talk
to. Good practice for a date with a more attractive woman, in any
case.

My real focus is on the women with money. I
like ambitious women. They can keep up with me, and what’s more,
they put a fair amount of their finances into things like hair
conditioner and teeth-whitening strips. Nylons. Bras that match
their underwear. I don’t need much to be happy, but I know what I
like.

If you’d met this girl, you’d ask for her
phone number too. Hanako. Even the name is alluring. It means
“flower” in Japanese, which I know from reading a Japanese-English
pocket dictionary earlier today.

Cultural literacy is important.

Hanako was a cute little thing, with a flat
ass and strappy red stilettos. She probably gave great head, you
could tell from her smile. Like she was intimately acquainted with
some hilarious inside joke, and the poor rest of the world had no
idea.

Emmalee was boring anyway. Emmalee Thunder.
Frumpy, frumpy woman. Only a girl, really. The whole time we ate
lunch she just went on and on about some dumb TV show, and her
pregnant mother – what do I care about your family? I’m trying to
eat here.

So I excused myself and got Hanako’s phone
number.

Personally, I feel it was within bounds.

Then Nick got all bitchy with me. He was
sitting around waiting for an interview at the same restaurant
Emmalee and I were eating at. He saw everything. Of course, he was
too well-mannered to say anything at the restaurant, but he
definitely phoned me up afterwards and gave me a good loud piece of
his mind.

Nick thinks I’m trying to fuck with his
precious sister. Saint Brooke, right? Queen of the damned? She can
do no wrong, her and her chaste-ass angry girl feminist songwriter
poetry bullshit.

Right.

Brooke’s a nutcase, plain and simple. She’s
got her good points, obviously. I like her hair, and her face, and
the rest of her. But her mind is crazy. It’s like she has all this
anger. The rest of the world isn’t smart enough for her, and she’s
always so disappointed. I wish she’d just grow up and learn to
lower her standards a bit.

If we weren’t in Deathskull Bombshell
together I’d probably just say fuck it and dump her.

We’re not dating, though, I mean.

I think.

Oh, whatever dating means, anyway. I don’t
know what I mean. Maybe we’re dating and nobody told me about it.
It would explain a lot of her behavior lately.

I just mean she’s crazy. Brooke’s crazy and
her brother’s a nosy brat.

September 2015

Floating between sleep and almost-sleep,
Nick’s heavy body sunk into the couch after a long day at work.
Pillows everywhere. Lamp lit. He heard the front door open, then
slam shut. The metallic triple-lock for security, two chains and a
latch. A crunch of gravel meant someone drove away.

He blinked his eyes at the shapes in his
living room, trying to reassemble reality after his dream almost
started. Yawning, he fumbled to put his glasses back on.

Parker knelt next to him. “Hi,” he said,
kissing Nick. He missed his mouth, ending up on the chin.

“You missed.” Nick grabbed his face.

Kylie cleared her throat from the doorway,
where she stood. “Seriously guys, get a room.”

“My sister’s here,” Parker said,
apologetic.

Nick nodded, blinking the sleep out of his
eyes. “Hey, Kylie,” he said, waving a hand at her.

Kylie stood back, eyeing the tile floor, the
dishes drying in the rack next to the sink, the magnets on the
fridge shaped like comic book characters and beer logos. “Can I
have a snack?” she asked.

“Sure,” Nick said. “There’s rhubarb pie in
the fridge if you want any, and we have milk…” He paused. “Or
water, if you want. And tuna salad. You like tuna salad?”

She shook her head. “I want vegan macaroni
and crumbled feta cheese with parsley, and mint ice cream with an
Italian soda. But it has to be strawberry.”

“Dude. We don’t have any of that. If you want
a snack, you’re gonna have to settle for what’s in the fridge,”
Parker said.

Kylie frowned. “I never settle.”

“Okay then, go to bed. You have school
tomorrow.”

“Whatever,” Kylie said.

“Yeah, whatever,” Parker said. “C’mon, I’ll
get you to your room.” He led her to the guest room and pulled out
an air mattress, and a sleeping bag for extra cushion, and an old
quilt with flowers on it. “Brush your teeth,” he said.

“Yeah yeah yeah,” she said. Punk. She crawled
into bed and squeezed her eyes shut.

Parker flipped the lights, not wanting to
argue. Kid got everything she wanted anyway. A little tooth decay
would probably teach her something. He walked out to the living
room, where Nick sat on the couch, barely awake.

His eyelids fluttered. “How was the pow-wow?”
he mumbled.

Parker kissed his cheek. “It was alright. Fun
seeing everyone, you know how it is. Dancing was cool.” He paused,
eyeing the copy of
The Art of Happiness
next to the couch.
“I thought you hated the Dalai Lama.”

“I do,” Nick said.

“But you have his book?”

“I’m trying to reconcile my hatred.”

Parker laughed. “Is it going well?”

Nick rolled his eyes, grinning. “Nope. You
want to go to bed? I’m fucking tired.”

“Me too.”

They crawled into the queen-size bed, which
was a bit too luxurious but totally comfortable after such a long
day, and fell asleep, exhausted.

Austin and Alex moved out of the house the
previous year, not wanting to intrude on honeymoon life. Well, they
said they didn’t want to intrude, but then they came over for pizza
and video games all the time, and sometimes they’d fall asleep on
the floor, so it was kind of like they were still roommates.

When Grandma Roche died, she left Nick and
Parker the Wisconsin house, along with a decent amount of money.
Brooke got the same amount, plus all the smelly old-woman perfumes
and jewelry she could ever want. She was about to graduate with an
art degree, and a certification in vocal training, whatever that
meant.

Parker was in his first year of community
college, taking his general requirement classes and shelving books
at the library for cash. Nick quit Lardé’s Bistro in favor of a
custodial position at the local post office, but Frasquita still
phoned him up every few weeks to complain about Polly.

A few hours later, a loud crash sounded from
the kitchen. The neon digital alarm clock read 4:12 AM.

Damn.

Nick tumbled out of bed, heart racing,
stomach twisted in his gut. He grabbed the baseball bat to
investigate the noise, prepared to defend his family and property.
He was gonna fuck them up. Whoever they were. Oh, they’d be sorry
for messing with him and Parker and Kylie.

He gripped the baseball bat, wondering when
it had been washed last. What if he had to kill someone? Imagine
the mess from a bludgeoned corpse.

Gross.

Nick stalked-ran-tripped into the kitchen,
baseball bat in hand, ready to kill. His feet felt clumsy, and he
almost fell over from nerves. He was stunned to see Kylie at the
stove, in her pajama pants and t-shirt and fuzzy pink slippers,
crumbling up a block of feta cheese to put in her vegan macaroni
noodles.

Thank God.

She looked up at him, screwing up her face,
then shoved some feta cheese in her mouth. “Man, what’s with you?
You look like you just ran a marathon or something. Damn weirdo.”
She paused, looking at her giant bowl of health food. It looked
like a salad, except with ice cream added. From the looks of the
empty ice cream container, it was vegan pistachio mint pecan.

Well, he had to commend her for her
creativity in flavor combinations, but it was so damn early in the
morning. Did she have to be awake right now? God.

“Did you know they make pills for
lactose-intolerant people?” Kylie asked, biting off another corner
of feta cheese. “I could eat this shit all day.”

Nick sighed, annoyed. He closed his eyes and
pinched the bridge of his nose.

“What?” Kylie asked.

He shook his head. “It’s cool. Don’t worry
about it.”

He went back to bed.

March 2003

“I don’t get why you hang out with him,” Nick
said one night while he and Brooke ate dinner. It was well past
8:00 PM, but it didn’t really matter. Work and school meant they
had to be flexible with their schedules if they ever wanted to hang
out. Brooke was adamant on them eating dinner at the same time. She
said it made her feel like a freak standing in the kitchen eating
by herself. It annoyed him, but he understood.

Pepperoni pizza night for the third day in a
row. Lardé’s Bistro hired on two new dishwashers. Since Nick lacked
the longevity and experience to train in new guys, they cut his
hours. It was only temporary, his boss Newt Larson said. Nick
didn’t believe him.

Food was the first expense to go, since they
couldn’t do without the payments on the house. When he had spare
time, Nick picked up boxes of food from the local food pantry. He
hated receiving charity, but there weren’t many options. It wasn’t
like the parental units were going to come back home for a
while.

Assholes.

Nick and Brooke both started picking up job
applications, and Brooke took up odd jobs cutting hair in study
hall, but she didn’t get that many customers. Most of her
classmates hated her.

Brooke looked up from her pizza. Lately she
liked to cut her pizza into little squares with a knife and dip it
into mayonnaise. It was a new habit with her, mayonnaise. She ate
way too much calcium lately, Nick thought, and her stomach looked
big.

“What? Hang out with who?” she asked.

“Trevor,” Nick said. “Lars.”

Brooke smiled, lifting the fork to her mouth.
“Oh, don’t mind him. He’s okay.”

“Okay?” Nick said. “He’s a total sleazebag.
Do you know what he did to Emmalee the other day?” He grabbed his
cup of water.

“Who?” Brooke asked.

“You know,” Nick said. He tried to describe
her, but couldn’t. She was just Emmalee to him. “That girl, you
know. Um.” He drank his water. “He took her on a date to the Jade
Rose China Dragon, you know, the Chinese restaurant that does the
fried sesame chicken thing, and then he just, like… left her there
while he went and got the waitress’s phone number.”

He paused, looking to see her reaction. She
was still eating.

“I mean, he literally left her in the
restaurant all by herself so he could go hit on someone else.”

“I don’t believe you,” Brooke said. “Trevor
would never do such a thing.”

“Well, he did. I saw it.”

“I think he’s nice,” she said. “It’s his
business what he does with his dating life, not mine.”

She looked out the window, watching the rain
fall, and Nick followed her gaze. Later, all that rain would turn
to dirt and slush, another disgusting thing to mop off the floors
at work.

He frowned at his pizza. “You’re
retarded.”